Unlike food service ware, for which there is no existing recovery program
that would be threatened by bio-plastic utensils and food packaging, there is a
recovery infrastructure and a thriving recycling market for polyethylene
terephthalate (PET) bottles. Polylactic acid (PLA) bottles could undermine the economics of PET
recycling by contaminating PET bales, by increasing sorting and handling costs, by losing high PET revenues displaced by PLA and by fractionalizing the PET market until one or more segments are too small to sustain a recycling infrastructure.

The existing PET infrastructure generates upwards of $120 million a year for
the approximately 9,000 recycling programs a year. Recycling businesses and
curbside recycling programs could be jeopardized by a new resin if it could not
be recycled as economically as PET. If those recycling programs and the PET
reclaimers and end-users are not to be compromised we feel that PLA’s economic
recyclability must be demonstrated before, and not after, PLA is introduced into
bottle applications on a wide scale.

We the undersigned call on NatureWorks to agree to a moratorium on any
further expansion of PLA into bottles until these issues are resolved